Costa Rican Spanish is the form of the Spanish language spoken in Costa Rica. It is one of the dialects of Central American Spanish. Nevertheless, because the country was more remote than its neighbors, the development of this variety of Spanish followed a distinct path. Today, despite the relatively small size of the country, each province maintains unique characteristics in pronunciation and lexicon. For instance, the Guanacase province's variety bears similarity to that of Nicaragua, while the tú form can be found more toward the border with Panama.

Phonetics and Phonology

The distinguishing characteristics of Costa Rican phonetics include the following: Note: This does not apply to the single-R phoneme which is typically pronounced as an alveolar tap [ɾ] as in most varieties of Spanish.

Second person singular pronouns

Usted

Usted is the predominant second person singular pronoun in Costa Rican Spanish. Young men have been leading a trend in addressing close friends and peers with usted, which is not typical of other Spanish dialects. Some speakers use only usted in addressing others, never vos or tú. Others use both usted and vos, according to the situation.

Vos

Vos is a second person singular pronoun used by many speakers in certain relationships of familiarity or informal contexts. Voseo is widely used between friends, family, people of the same age, etc. It is also commonly used in the university context between students. Some adults use vos to address children or juveniles, but other adults address everyone regardless of age or status with usted. Costa Ricans tend to use usted with foreigners. Vos has become less popular in adults below the age of thirty, as of 2016.

Tú

Tú is occasionally used in Costa Rican Spanish. However, due in part to the influence of Mexican television programming, Costa Ricans are familiar with tuteo, and some television viewers, especially children, have begun to use it in limited contexts. It used to be much rarer, and is often considered not really "Costa Rican." As of 2016, young adults use tú as infrequently as do older adults.

Tiquismos

Costa Ricans are colloquially called "ticos" (based on the frequent use of the diminutive ending -ico following a /t/, as in momentico), and thus colloquial expressions characteristic of Costa Rica are called tiquismos. Tiquismos and pachuquismos are used frequently in Costa Rica. The latter are expressions of popular street Spanish which can be considered vulgar and offensive if used in the wrong context. Many of these words, even when found in a standard Spanish dictionary, do not have the same meaning there as in Costa Rica. Learning colloquial expressions can be a guide to understanding the humor and character of the Costa Rican culture. Here are some examples of Costa Rican slang.